It's So Cowardly
by Vega62a
Summary: Sei, Yumi, and their cowardice. Relates to a few of my other stories, but can stand alone too. A story of a tryst in three or so parts. T for now. M later, maybe, for language and possibly sex. Part three now up!
1. Chapter 1

Those familiar with Japan's tollway system may find several errors in the early parts of this story. I hope you'll forgive me.

Before reading this, read White Reflection, one of my other shorts. Find a link in my profile if you're having trouble locating it. This story follows WR's canon, and there's a direct reference to the events in this story within the text of that story. I'll explain it briefly at the end, since fanon is never the most memorable of things. That means no skipping ahead and cheating.

This story will take place in several parts. Probably no more than four, but unlike WR or 2x4, it's a multifaceted thing. I'm posting part of it early because I'm a bastard like that. If Sei's plight seems unlikely, please bear with me. All will be explained in time, but only after you've had time to ponder it a while.

The name of the Barre and Grille in the story is a contraction and my own little play on words. Fleshed out, it's _Asa wa konai, _(あさはこない) Japanese for _morning doesn't come. _I think the real humor to it is that it's something you'd be likely to see _in _America, where such an idiotic play might be feasible. Maybe_ that's _why it calls itself an American Grille.

This is the first of three or so parts. I think.

This story was inspired by a Japanese song of the same name (only, you know, in Japanese). Whoever figures it out gets a cookie. (Hint: Study your anime)

* * *

_Thriving in solitude has been mistaken for my life story_

* * *

It's so cowardly

* * *

**One**

* * *

Sei Satou wore her hair down, and she played her music as loud as she damn well pleased. A regular rebel, by the Lillian's standards--that was how they all saw her, after all: A bare-footed, unshaven, easy-loving free spirit. She was none of those things, of course, but she knew she probably couldn't convince them of it, even were she to show them her calves, clean-shaven, with her freshly polished shoes just below—because she _did _shave, and often, inconvenient as it was. She still attended Lillian University, and so the hem of her skirt was still tidy, and she still walked slowly, even when she was sprinting to make class on time. Her roommate (who had firsthand experience with Sei's slender, hairless legs) asked her why she bothered shaving when there were no men around, and she never seemed to go out to meet them—she always smiled and told the pretty, clueless girl that she enjoyed the atmosphere around the school, and liked looking her best. The pretty, clueless girl never got it, only received it with a vacant look, smiled, and went back to her own work.

Sei Satou also drove fast—very fast, in fact. Most of the time, it was because she enjoyed it. This time, it was because she was very late, and very scared. She was not frightened because she was late, though she had every right to be. Rather, she was frightened because she had agreed to go at all. She would never admit it to herself—never acknowledge that dry little twist of her stomach, never let her hands clench themselves into fists the way they wanted to every time she thought about it. She denied these things, and yet she was still afraid, because such was the nature of fear. Nobody could deny it, no matter how hard they tried.

As the needle on her speedometer nudged its way up past the little _90 _mark, she decided it was probably high time to slow down a little bit, especially since she'd be off the tollway soon—taking a tollway to get halfway across town, now _that _was proof of fear if ever it existed.

_Why not just stand the whole deal up? _This thought had occurred to her many times since she had started the car. _Stay on the tollway until you get to Nagoya, pick Yumi up, and go have a decent night with the money you've saved to torture yourself with for the next four hours._

_What the hell am I doing? This isn't me. This isn't anybody even remotely like me. Was I _drunk? _Am I now?_

She was pretty sure she hadn't been.

That didn't change the fact that what she was doing was royally stupid. Maybe tomorrow morning, after trying to sleep off the biggest hangover of her life or anybody else's, she'd be able to say, _at least now they'll get off my ass about it, _or _I guess I _was _drunk, _or maybe even _I guess that proves _that _for certain. _She doubted it, though.

The trouble of the matter was that Sei Satou knew next to nothing about men. The one  
_other_  
man with whom she was acquainted in any way was Suguru Kashiwagi, which did nothing to color her perspective of "the other half" rosily. She didn't really care to know much about them, either. She knew she didn't like them in _that way, _and she had _thought _she knew how to deal with them well enough that they'd leave her the hell alone at bars, (at the ripe old age of twenty, Sei was not precisely a barfly, but she _had _sampled the local cuisine, several times) but apparently she was not entirely correct about this, because here she was.

But then again, that wasn't right, either. It wasn't men she didn't know how to deal with. It was those women. The ones who called her a_ tree-hugging jungle-legged hippie, _among other things, behind her back—_they _were the ones she didn't know how to deal with.

_That's not true. You know women like Kashiwagi knows men. _She smiled at that thought. _That's gotta be how it is. _

_But then, _she thought, a bit more morosely, _how _did _you wind up here? Were you tricked? You may just have been, but it didn't seem like a trick at the time. _She thought that maybe that was the best sort of trick—the kind that didn't seem like a trick at all. She had never been particularly skilled at guile herself—she was able to fool Yumi, but everybody was able to fool Yumi. Yumi was gullible.

The thought of Yumi buoyed her spirits a little bit. _It won't be so bad, anyway. If you can skip the restaurant entirely, go straight to the restaurant, you can get yourself shat against the wall in an hour, tops. You can talk to a guy for that long._

The song on the radio changed—she barely noticed it.

_And after that, all you have to do is make sure you don't wind up in his bed with your freshly-shaven legs open wider'n Sister Geyer's gut. That shouldn't be too hard. Right? _

_Yeah, not too hard at all. As long as he doesn't fuck with your drink. Just watch your drink, Sei. Just your drink._

_Watch your legs, too. _

_And his hands. Watch his hands. Don't Guys have wandering hands?_

_What the hell are you doing?_

_What the hell _am _I doing?_

Somebody was honking at her, and Sei was brought abruptly back to reality as she realized that she was taking up two lanes in her tiny little Volkswagen Beetle. She swerved abruptly, a reflexive action—and nearly into a car riding parallel to her. Only the other driver's quick reflexes saved them both a hell of a way to end an evening. The driver, a young, drab-looking woman, leaned into her horn and rested there for a bit, her face the very picture of young, drab outrage. Sei smiled as best she could, waved perkily, trying to figure out how best to pantomime _sorry. _She was still thinking on it when the other car pulled ahead of her. It vanished into all of the scenery which never made it past Sei's eyes a few seconds later.

The song changed again. What played now was more upbeat, faster in tempo and heavier on the guitar. Sei forced herself to smile, and turned the volume up, thinking that perhaps it would be the last thing she might enjoy all night and determined to enjoy it.

* * *

**Two**

* * *

Sei had originally been determined to wear precisely what she always wore outside of school property: Jeans and a button-up shirt. She had thought she could do it, too, but at the last moment she had cracked and put a skirt on, her stomach doing the loop-de-loop as she did. Not with nerves, not precisely, but with an odd sort of tension. _Goddamnit, what do you think you're doing? You take that off and put on a pair of sweatpants right now, young lady! _She hadn't, of course, in spite of the butterflies and the mental talking-down. She had put on makeup, too.

_What's the point if you're not going to make it look like you made an honest effort? _She had tried to rationalize it as she did. _Nobody's going to get off your back if you show up wearing sweatpants, frumpy glasses, and drink straight whiskey for the entire night. _

But it was more than that, and she knew it: She didn't want to look bad. Even if it was a complete act, even if the whole thing was just a thing to be gossiped on the next day so that her life could ease up a bit. Even if she barely remembered his name, and couldn't care less what he thought of her before, during, or after. Even if.

_Even _if_, you still can't escape what Lillian gave you. _She couldn't decide if what Lillian had given her was a sense of pride or a funny little voice in her head which occasionally nagged at her to straighten her back and slow down as she walked, but neither could she make it go away.

_And besides, _she thought, _you're going _out. _How long has it been? _

She realized with a certain despair that she couldn't answer her own question. Her mind automatically switched the subject, a sort of self-defense mechanism she'd always possessed. _Besides, what if there's some pretty young woman in there just _begging _to be rescued from a plight similar to my own? Never heard of a knight in shining sweatpants, have you?_

_You will do no such thing. Who's going to get off your back about it _then?

That very thought—_do it right, or nobody will get off your back—_had occurred to her no less than twelve times in the past twenty minutes; an iron-clad rebuttal to her every attempt to escape what she was doing. What she'd forced herself to do.

This time, though, something new came to mind:

_Why do you _need _them off your back? Why do you need to defend yourself to them?_ _Hide yourself from them?_

_Because they are many, and you are one, and they are everywhere. _

_Fuck them, then. I can go on without them._

_It's not going on without them that is problematic. It's going on, so long as they're still around. They are many, and you are one, Sei. You're defenseless if it comes down to it._

_What are they going to do to me? The hell _can _they do to _me?

This sort of naïveté had never suited Sei Satou. She knew it—as idealistic and pretty as it was to pretend that nobody could faze you, no one could touch you who you didn't want to touch you, it was only that—idealism. The sort of thing that had no place in real life. Sei wasn't a hermit. Sei wasn't a misanthrope. Sei was not a sociopath, nor was she invulnerable.

Sei was just a person.

Sei was just a person, and Lillian University, the _same fucking school _which she had come up in all her life, was all of a sudden kicking her posterior, but good.

_Kei's gone now, so that's really it. It's just you, Sei, you and the world, and the world's winning by a landslide. So for now…_

_For now, you need to focus on your driving._

For the second time in less than half an hour, Sei narrowly avoided an accident. Or rather, the driver in front of her narrowly avoided an accident. Sei did nothing to help. She slammed on the brakes approximately one second too late to avoid rear-ending the person waiting at the stoplight ahead, and the person slammed on the gas pedal (_stop _was just barely done fading out) and his horn simultaneously. Sei didn't bother to wave this time. She was thinking about where she was going now.

She knew where the restaurant was; the last time she had _gone out, _(though she couldn't quite remember when)she had gone there. It was attached to the bar where she had met him, after all. He had given her his number, and she had not discarded it—she wasn't quite sure why. Maybe for just such a reason as this. The thought of herself gifted with that sort of foresight made her want to laugh a little.

She thought that maybe it was the last time she'd laugh that night, so she allowed herself the luxury of a chuckle.

* * *

**Three**

* * *

Tokyo was not a quiet city by anybody's standards, but tonight it seemed to be full to bursting—as though if one more person entered the city's bounds, it might just explode, pop like a bubble at the end of a children's toy. It was odd, since the tollway had been nearly deserted—probably the only reason she and her car had made it to the only parking spot left in a mile's radius in one piece—she supposed it was probably because everybody had already _gone out, _and they were now _out. _She wasn't late—not by much, anyway. She simply kept odd hours.

_A date at ten at night. Shouldn't I be drunk already?_

She shook her head at the thought. _Not a date. An escape. _

Besides. Maybe she'd be lucky. Maybe he'd be really nice. Maybe he'd look at her face and magically understand her plight, and smile and buy her a drink, and then go home half an hour later and tell lie to all his guy friends about how he'd boned her so hard she'd begged for mercy and more, all at once. His guy friends who would then spread this to their girl friends, but never to Lillian's faculty, and then she'd be…

She'd be munching on her golden gilded hat was what she'd be doing, because it would never happen—Sei thought that probably there wasn't that much luck in the entire world.

The three blocks between she and the passed far too quickly for her liking. Even if it _was _cold

_in your skirt with your shaved legs and shaved something else why did you shave _that

outside. She'd rather have walked for the rest of the night. She'd rather have done _anything _for the night. She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to do this. _I don't want to do this. I don't want to goddamn do this what the _hell _am I doing here just get back in your car and pull out of your overpriced parking spot and get the hell out of here. This is wrong. This is stupid, and it's wrong and it's not goddamn you. You have _never _been this much of a weakling before get a hold of yourself and get back in the car._

And yet, still, her legs moved. One after the other, slowly and gracefully, in spite of the goosebumps running up her otherwise smooth thighs and in spite of the hole in her gut which refused to do anything but chew at her stomach, her legs moved. She supposed that hole in her gut was something a little like shame. She wasn't surprised.

And then, there it was. Asawakina, American-style Bar and Grill. The place was decent, she remembered—it served teriyaki burgers that were nothing to spit at, even though she wasn't quite certain that there _were _Teriyaki burgers in America.

_And, if nothing else, it has booze. _

There was that, too. She wondered briefly how she was planning on getting home for the night, and realized that it was quite a problem, in fact—she'd brought money for a hotel, hoping she'd be too plastered to even think about driving, and she knew of several hotels, sketchy though they were, in walking distance. The problem was, what did she tell _him? Sorry, I'm going home now, no, to a hotel down the street. What? You say you want to come with? No, I'm actually _driving home_, though I can't quite remember which end of the key goes in where, so don't worry about me, I'll be just fine. Just fine indeed._

"Sei?" the strong male voice came from behind her—she didn't notice the note of uncertainty in it, probably on account of her own—but it may as well have come out of nowhere. She jerked and clamped her mouth shut reflexively to keep herself from screeching in alarm, and turned around as quickly as she could, her skirt whirling underneath her a bit like a parasol as she did. Her stomach lurched in anxiety as she came to a stop, now facing the mildly stout, not-unattractive (she supposed) man who had to have been in his mid-twenties. This was it. No turning back now; she was in for _all _the marbles, whatever they may be.

"Oh!" she forced a smile onto her face much in the same way a plumber might force a stubborn nut into place. "Hey there…" her mind began working furiously. _His name began with a K syllable. Ka. Ki. Ke. Kenichi? _"Kenji." She was taking one plunge already. Another couldn't hurt.

He smiled at her, his face relaxing as he did. "Kunikida," he said a little wryly. She tried not to make it obvious that she didn't give a shit—or maybe she did, but not in the way he'd like her to. Instead, she smiled. "You got it wrong when you called me too, but I didn't say anything because I was afraid you'd hang up."

"Oh, right. Sorry," she said, and then realized she didn't know what to say next.

Apparently, he didn't either. After a moment of terse silence, though, he laughed. It was big and expressive, and she found herself relaxing a little in spite of herself—a good laugh did that to her. Maybe that was why she had liked Yumi so much, a couple million years ago. "Damn," he said, his face working its way into a big grin that matched his laugh. "And here I was, making plans for my smooth entrance and everything. You're killing me here, Sei. Really killing me."

She smiled back, this time more genuine. "Sorry," she repeated.

"'S all right," he said. "Want to know what's on the menu tonight?"

"No," she admitted, and he laughed again. She found herself relaxing more—he reminded her a little of her father, before all of the shit had hit the fan.

"No, but seriously," he said. "I'm freezing, and I imagine you can't much feel your legs anymore," he indicated her skirt. She nodded appreciatively, and he made what he would later call his first of two gaffes of the evening when excusing himself to his guy friends—he put his arm around her shoulder—protectively, he would proclaim, his voice dripping with false affront, because she looked _colder'n a witch's tit_. After that, he would say, she just sort of froze up, and before they'd even had a chance to order some imported beer, she was gone. They would believe him, and they would pass what he had said on to their girl friends, with the added note that Kunikuda was kind of a pushy bastard sometimes. He would bear this criticism, which he feared was far truer than he'd admit easily, because, frankly, he liked the girl. He liked Sei, even if he had no shot at it, because she didn't even play for his team, something he suspected even as he settled his meaty, oft-welcomed arm about the light-haired girl's shoulder.

But all of that was still in the future. Not far in the future, but in the future. For now, there was only what there was—Kunikuda, walking towards the entrance with Sei on his arm, actually fairly grateful for (if extremely, unbearably uncomfortable with) the warmth it provided.

* * *

Look forward to the rest in a few days! (Or maybe longer—I have exams. When do I NOT have exams?) 


	2. Chapter 2

A/N:

Part two.

I've got to apologize for the time it took me to get this out. I was planning on--and telling you--a week tops, and then finals ambushed me from the bushes, and then I went home and my girlfriend was there, and I saw her for the first time in over a month and a half, and...yeah. But here's this part. I promise to try for the next part within a week, only this time a week isn't two months.

Disclaimer: I suck at decorating things, and my interior designer friend is away right now, so I made up the restaurant's design. That's probably why, if some brave chap were to implement it, it would be ugly as sin.

"Sa shi su se so." is a part of the Japanese alphabet, which is divided into 46 basic sounds. (plus double-letter sounds which technically bring it to easily twice that). The order is used frequently in memorizational mnemonics, much as the ABC song might be used in English.

* * *

_I can glimpse the child I knew so well in the face I now see. _

* * *

**Four**

* * *

Of what Kunikuda would later tell his friends pertaining to his date with _that really hot catholic girl_, about half would be true. Among the falsities he would tell would be that the girl "just sort of froze up" as soon as he touched her—this was not entirely a lie, but it was certainly not the truth. Sei did indeed stiffen at his touch, but as they entered the restaurant and the warmth of the lights and heater washed over the two of them, he let go almost immediately, and she relaxed. 

The restaurant was fairly lavish, considering it boasted itself as a "bar and grill." White linen flanked Asawakina's walls, hanging down in small half-circles, which seemed to melt into drapes around the windows. Immediately to their left, a large gap in the wall gave them a glimpse of where Sei _really _wanted to be—the bar. The halfway-enticing, halfway-repulsive aroma of fresh booze and stale tobacco brushed over them as they passed this opening, on their way to the section of the restaurant reserved for nonsmokers.

Apparently, Kunikuda had made reservations—Sei hadn't realized that this would be a disappointment until she felt it gnaw at her stomach. He confirmed them with a man with a stiff suit and a stiffer mustache, who merely nodded and guided them to a table. Sei thought she probably could have found it by herself, but she didn't turn her nose at it, if only because it would have been ungodly rude. They walked in single file—the maitre'd in front, followed at a short distance by Kunikuda, followed in turn by Sei, who could practically see over his head. It was a bit like the ants, marching one by one, down into whatever a fancy American Bar and Grille had in lieu of the ground. Kunikuda didn't try to say anything to her, and for that, Sei was glad; something inside of her was a little bit frightened at the place. Nothing she could have put her finger on—maybe something in the casual glances of the middle-aged women and the not-so-casual glances from their middle-aged husbands, that glance that said, _what the hell are you doing with _that _hobbit? Why don't you come here and sit down, and I'll tell this old ball and chain that I work with you. It'll be fun for everyone. Honest. But not fun _and _honest, no way, not us, right? Right? Right?_

(RIGHT? ISN'T THAT RIGHT? WE'LL HAVE LOTS OF FUN WON'T WE SEI JUST COME AND SIT DOWN HERE)

It almost hurt. Sei put her index finger and thumb on the bridge of her nose, massaging, trying to force the pain back down—something which in and of itself was like trying to burn out the blaze consuming your house. She wasn't aware that she'd slowed her pace until Kunikuda did a quick turn, found her falling behind, and said, "Sei? Are you all right?" with a genuinely concerned look on his face.

Sei smiled at him—faked, and obviously so, a fact which was not lost on him—and nodded. "Of course," she said, and then hurried towards the table that the maitre'd had come to stand next to, waiting for them with all the patience of an apathetic babysitter. _Any time you're ready, I'm here. Just don't make too much noise—my stories are on. _

They both sat, and the stiff-mustached man took their orders. Wine for Kunikuda. Beer for Sei. Another man might have seen this as a test, or even better, a sign that Sei was trying to relate. Kunikuda, called an _old soul _by his mother and a _perceptive dumbass _by most of his friends, knew better. He thought briefly about giving up then and there and going home—if he had ever dated a girl who wanted him around _less _than this Satou Sei, he would probably have been jailed for it. The two old excuses immediately flew into his mind, the easy, oblivious salve to assuage his mildly bruised ego, the two excuses known to all men who have been, either inadvertently or otherwise, shot down, burned, or otherwise decimated in an attempt at romance: _Maybe she's on her period. Or maybe she's a lesbian._

_Or maybe you could stop being a fucking moron. She goes to a Catholic school—Lillian, that really conservative one where they don't let you bring boys on campus. She'd be burned alive, if not by the teachers than by the other girls. They'd have driven her out as soon as they scented her if that was the case. _He didn't find out until later how close to the truth he had come, thinking that.

Thinking himself suddenly brave, Kunikuda said, "So." So. An ancient conversation starter from an ancient conversationalist. _What do you think of the restaurant? What kind of beer do you like? I found the best wine on the menu at a glance because I did my homework, but I'm straight, honest. In case you were nervous about that, and not about me, like…_

_Like you are. _

_Shit._

Sei was looking at him semi-anxiously; was she waiting for him to speak or waiting for an opportunity to bolt? It was hard to tell.

_So._

_Sa shi su se so. _

_What a fascinating person you are, buddy. Wanna have a cup of tea sometime? _

"So," he repeated. _Wanna hear about the people in my head mocking me for not knowing what to say? Are you a lesbian, or am I less suave than I thought? Shut up. _"What…"

She stared at his neck a little meekly, and he sighed. If there was somebody on God's good earth as unapproachable as this girl was, she probably had a continent to herself. It wasn't that she was _gruff—_she just looked…

_Scared. _

Scared. That's what she looked. Why the hell would a girl like her look scared? She'd probably been on hundreds of dates. She had to have experience with guys—even fascist parents couldn't keep a girl like her from dating in school when they weren't paying attention. (If Sei had heard him say that, she might have said that she had a very wealthy friend she'd like him to meet). So what was this, then? This was practically rape.

Kunikuda shook his head. _Fuck it. Date is blown already. We may as well be frank about it. _"Look," he said, not angry, but feeling very tired all at once. "If you want to go, you can go. I'll pick up the tab, since I was planning to anyway. I'll even drink what you ordered if you want to leave, since truth be told, I'll drink beer just as easily as wine, even if it tastes like horse piss going both ways."

"I didn't…" Sei frowned at him, and he realized he could see the gears in her head…standing still. Not frantically churning out an excuse. Not trying to come up with a way to salvage what was left of the date, little though it was.

Here, Kunikuda would commit what he would later call to his friends his second, enormous, huge, unforgivable gaffe of the evening; one that, he would add in quiet, _you know _tones, prettymuch earned him that night of cold, lonely masturbation.

"You did. You're looking at me like you're scared I'm going to rape you. It's like instead of a suave, well-dressed man eying you with mild concern, you see sitting across from you a lazy-eyed, two-hundred pound chain-gangster leering at you over a flask of paint thinner." He liked that. That was good. "So if you want to leave, that's fine."

"I don't," Sei said, pressing her hands into her lap in a fashion which Kunikuda could not help but find unbearably cute. She even turned away slightly, blushing. She hated that—she wasn't even doing it on purpose.

Truth be told, he was only half on the mark, she thought. She certainly didn't see a suave, well-dressed man sitting across from her, but she was confident in her ability to defend herself, or at least to scream loud enough to wake half the neighborhood should the need arise. But she wasn't afraid, either. Not really. _You're not afraid of some guy whose only sin is trying to wine you maybe a little too fast and wearing socks that don't live up to what his pants and shoes promise. _(A little gaffe she'd noticed on the way in).

_But you are._

But she was. She wasn't afraid of men, but truth be told, she was piss-herself scared of this one, because he wasn't acting like she'd expected. He _wasn't _leering at her over a flask of paint thinner, fondling his (unbearably small) erection, burping loud enough to shake the chairs.

_The truth is, you know absolutely shit about good men. That's what your problem is. _

"Here. Let me help you get your coat." Kunikuda did not let any of his disappointment, nor his frustration, creep into his voice, instead keeping it gentle and strong all at once, as he had learned to do long ago. (Women, he knew, loved men with good bodies, but would still fall in love with a good radio personality any day of the week). Nonetheless, Sei knew it was there, because how could it not be?

But at the same time, this wasn't what she wanted. What she _needed. _

"No," she said, and then with a very brave hand, touched his arm as it reached for her. "Please, have a seat. I'm sorry."

"Will you tell me what it is that's scaring you so badly?"

"I'm not—" She tried it a second time, and it was no more effective than the first.

"You are. Your hand is trembling."

"I'm cold."

"You ordered a cold beer. The restaurant is heated."

They stared at each other for a moment, and then Kunikuda sat down with a grin on his face. He found that, in spite of his frustration, he actually liked Sei quite a bit.

Sei found she was thinking the same about this man, but not in the way he would have liked. She liked his directness, and she liked the way he knew when to quit. (His friends would have disagreed with that—perhaps he simply got the _no trespassing _scent a little earlier than usual this time around, they would say).

The waiter appeared then, and without looking at either of them, placed their drinks in front of them. "Will you be needing any more time to decide on your food?"

"Dunno," Kunikuda said. "Will you, Sei?"

Sei looked at him for a long moment, trying to decide what he meant by that. Then, finally, "Yeah—yes. Please come back in a few minutes."

The waiter bowed and vanished, and Kunikuda said, "You can be remarkably gentle."

"You should see the school I went to. If you went there for twelve years, you'd be a gentle lady by the time you were through too." She said it without thinking about it, and then all at once, she burst into a small fit of laughter, thinking a bit of Yumi—if they could make a lady out of _her, _they could make a lady out of anybody. Even Sei.

Kunikuda snorted indulgently. "Where is that?"

"It's the same school I go to now. Have you heard of the Lillian school?"

"Only in rumor and speculation. It's an all-girls catholic school is what I heard."

"You heard right. What were the rumors?"

"Nothing worth mentioning, especially not in polite company."

Sei snorted back at him at this, equally indulgently. "Go on. I'm the last person you want to think of as polite compa—" she stopped. _What the hell are you doing, woman? You're getting sucked into this conversation so fast…you're starting to let your guard down. What the hell did you just let yourself say? At this rate, he's gonna…_

_Gonna know you. _

Kunikuda was looking at her seriously. She tried to smile back at him, but found it didn't suit her that time.

"Tell me," he said. "Tell me what's going on."

She shook her head. "It's nothing important."

"You frequently stop speaking midword?"

She looked away. _Why won't he just stop asking questions and acting all concerned? It's annoying and difficult. _

_He's probably thinking the same thing about you. _The thought brought her a deceptive warmth, one which, if depended on for heat, only led to frostbite.

"Tell me. I feel as though I'm being jerked around here and I've only known you for ten minutes."

"What do you _care?_" she snapped at him, louder than she'd intended. She could hear the room go a little quieter at that—_can you really hear something like that? Is the absence of noise a sound unto itself? _

_Is the absence of companionship company unto itself? _

The question nagged at her more than she would have liked.

Kunikuda took a moment to unfreeze himself, and then after another moment, settled back into his seat. "Because," he said, "heaven help me, but I like you." She froze now, and he shrugged as best he could. "Take that as you want. I liked talking with you for the twenty seconds we did it, and I think I enjoyed your company the first time we met, even if you didn't enjoy mine, which is frankly why I was shocked when you called me back, and why I was a little suspicious. Was I wrong to be suspicious?"

"What do you mean?" she said.

"I mean, are you jerking me around?"

"What do you mean?" she repeated, honestly unsure of what he was saying.

"I mean," he said, then took a moment to think. When he spoke again, it was slower, his voice quieter and more controlled than it usually was: "Are you using me for something you could have just asked me for?"

"I can't ask you for anything," she said. "I don't know you." _If I did, would it matter?_

"If you did," he said, "would it help?" She nearly choked. "You're tense and nervous and it's making you irritable, isn't it?"

He was right, and she knew it. What was worse, she hadn't covered it up—as though his upfront, disarming mannerisms had taken all of the Lady out of her, and destroyed all of the many defenses the Lady in her provided.

And, she knew, that was exactly it.

He had been upfront and honest with her, even so far as to offer her the door because he knew she wanted to take it. He was on the level with her, and he seemed comfortable with the fact that he wasn't going to be getting any off her, or if he wasn't, he gave no sign of it.

He had even been a good sport when he figured out he was being used. That was the worst thing of all, the most horrible thing. He knew it, and he'd caught on faster than she could have imagined.

_This…_she sighed. _I suppose this is what a_ good man _looks like._

Here was where Kunikuda's friends and Sei would be in complete agreement. Maybe they thought he was usually too pushy, and maybe she thought his taste in wine was a little bit odd, because he'd ordered what she'd spotted as the shittiest drink on the menu, but neither would have argued with the other over this one central argument: Endo Kunikuda was a generally good man.

Really, wasn't that the one thing she wasn't really expecting, except in her most bitter, hopeful thoughts?  
_(to admit that you'd have to acknowledge that such a thing exists)  
(don't be a narrowminded bitch)_

"You're right," she said. "You're right and I'm sorry."

He smiled the smile of a man victorious in his defeat, disappointed and contented all at once, and leaned back. "Do tell," he said, and in that instant, Sei moved even nearer to Endo Kunikuda's friends, a group which she would be joining within a couple of weeks, though she didn't know it: She thought he was being a bit pushy.

Nonetheless, she thought that he was maybe entitled to a little bit of explanation.

First, though, the waiter, come like a southern wind, chilling the skin only just, so that if you complained to your friend about it, he might call you a pansy. "May I bring you anything?"

Sei shook her head. "I don't think so. I'm really not hungry, you know that?"

Endo shook his head. "Uh-uh. I'm paying, so you're eating." (_He's actually kind of pushy, _Sei thought.) "Order whatever you'd like."

Sei couldn't help but huff a bit. After a moment, she glanced at her menu, ignored for most of the time they'd been there, and said, "One teriyaki burger, well-done, please, with rice instead of french fries."

The waiter nodded, and then looked at Kunikuda, who, after careful deliberation, ordered the exact same thing. This bought them once again respite from his icy presence, and she was a little grateful.

They stared at each other for a long moment then, and Kunikuda said, "So. You were going to tell me."

"Tell you what?"

He smiled at her. "Whatever your little heart desires, I believe."

She sighed, knowing what he meant, and then looked back up at him.

And then, just as she opened her mouth to tell him, _I'm a lesbian and I'm afraid of what my classmates might do to me, socially or otherwise, if they find out because half of them are nothing more than narrow-minded pieces of trash, and so I need to go out on a date with a guy so that they'll think that I'm straight but just shy, but I'm fucking it all up because the truth is I'm scared witless of most men because we all fear what we know nothing about and I've been with nothing but girls since I was five and my dad was a bastard and so I didn't know any good men and you're taking me all off-guard and I'm really glad you are because I think I like you too but not in that way because I play for the other team you know I hope you understand, _the restaurant's doors opened, a motion which her eyes just happened to catch, and Yumi Fukuzawa walked through them and went into the bar.

And then she stopped dead. The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and every single part of her except her body left the table in that instant, reaching out for that happy, perky, expressive girl.

_Y…_

_Yumi. _

Yumi.

* * *

As always, thanks for reading! And remember, if you liked it, or if you didn't, drop me a review and tell me about it! 


	3. Chapter 3

Come into my lair, said the spider to the fly, and read the third (and final?) part of It's So Cowardly, known to me as Fugainaiya (inspired by the song—one is just a translation of the other).

Compared to the others, this one is LONG. Grab yourself a seat and a beer, because you might be here a while.

As always, thanks for reading!

Ryukyu is an old name for a string of islands off of Japan (and belonging to the Japanese government) including Okinawa and ending with Taiwan. (Which, of course, does not belong to Japan). Yumi is working on her History major at this point. Tokyo University is one of the leading research Universities in Japan (so entrance into the school is no mean feat) and has five campuses: Hongo, Komaba, Kashiwa, Shirokane, and Nakano. Those familiar with Japan's tollway system will, again, forgive whatever errors I make.

* * *

_You think you've run far away, but your story never ends / and yet, you're smirking / it's so cowardly_

* * *

**Five**

_Good for you._

* * *

Solitude, Endo Kunikuda thought, could do funny things to a person's brain. 

Endo had met Satou Sei only once before tonight, at a bar not far from here. She had been half-drunk at the time and well on her way to full-out. He had been alone then, and he'd put a fair amount of booze into his system by that point, though nowhere near enough to inebriate him, a fair wine cellar unto himself—just enough to give him that little bit of extra bravery that sober people somehow always seemed to confuse with stupidity and drunken arrogance. He had, in truth, been drinking off a nasty breakup, (the next day he would wind up drinking off a nasty hangover _and _a nasty breakup, though he didn't know it at the time) and she had been hanging out with a group of women. They had been laughing with her in the way that good friends did, but she had been laughing with them in the way _he _did when he was going for the proverbial female jugular; he had recognized it immediately, but he had been "brave" enough to ignore it entirely. She had seemed to him at that point almost masculine in the way she treated the two girls with her, and he had "bravely" ignored that too. Sei's departure from his table was the first time he had bothered to go back and carefully examine that fuzzy memory, and he would later rationalize it by saying that he had earlier that night watched a refreshing bout of bisexual porn, which had apparently gone to his head more than the booze.

That night, Endo had been isolated. Alone, the world had seemed a far scarier place to him, though that could have just as easily been the alcohol. The truth was, Endo was frequently isolated; it was simply a fact of his life. Endo worked quite a bit to support what he called his University Habit, and when he wasn't at class or work, he was usually sleeping. He found perhaps one or two nights a week to have fun with his friends, and then they usually insisted he get drunk with them. He did not like alcohol nearly so much as it seemed, but he liked _them, _and he thought that in spite of the fact that they did not think of him as much more than a drinking buddy, (though one or two of the girls, he thought, might have the hots for him—but he often thought that about women) if he lost them, he would be quite poorly off. Solitude did funny things to a person's brain; even solitude in the middle of a crowd of friends.

It was on this last bit that Endo devoted most of his thought. He had felt it before, of course, though not often—that funny little feeling when everybody around you is having fun, and they think you are too, when in reality you're miserable. It could be due to something bad in your life that you hadn't told anybody about—a dead cat, a failed grade, a fresh breakup—or simply because nobody was really paying any attention to you. But that kind of solitude, Endo thought, was nearly maddening. It created in you a deep, hollow insecurity: _Are these people really my friends? How can they be? They're not even seeing me at all. Doesn't that mean that they're lying to me? _After a while, that little thought evolved into more complex machinations—how many of your "friends" are actually lying to you? Or even worse, in a way, how many have you simply misinterpreted? _Oh, I'm sorry, _they could be saying, _did you think that I cared about you? I'm sorry if I sent off that signal, but in truth you're really just a drinking buddy—a good guy, somebody to talk to if I need a perking up or a laugh, since you've got a nice sense of humor. I like you well enough, but please keep yourself to yourself, okay? _

That sort of solitude did no ambiguous "funny things" to a person's head, Endo thought. It simply drove you mad, honest and surely.

Ten seconds after Sei stood up and left, the waiter set her beer down at her spot. He set Endo's wine down in his. He vanished.

Fifteen seconds after Sei stood up and left, Endo decided that his wine tasted like shit. He really did have lousy taste in wines.

Twenty seconds later, he had taken a deep drought from Sei's beer, which tasted a little like horse piss (she had poor taste in beer, he thought). He felt a little braver. Maybe brave enough to do what he thought he maybe had to do. He took another drought to ensure that his voice could attain the necessary obnoxious power he would need, and then he stood up too. He could just barely see Sei's head retreating towards the bar attached to the restaurant.

This, he thought dimly, was one of those things that he would probably be embarrassed about later. He wasn't drunk enough to forget it—he was only a little buzzed, in fact, since he could hold his liquor well enough (though not as well as he thought he could)—but that was alright.

"Sei!" he called, and the restaurant mostly lost its dim, humming voice. The girl turned around and faced him.

"What is it, Endo?" she said gently.

"Those two friends of yours, the first time I met you," he said loudly, intending his voice to match her gentleness but failing unwittingly. "What happened to them?"

"They left," she said. He could not interpret her voice, save for the hesitation before the answer. Maybe that was interpretation enough.

_They left._

Endo Kunikuda sat down. Then he stood up again.

"Call me sometime, will you?" he shouted. "I won't leave."

She smiled at him, and for the first time all night, that Sei that he remembered—the shit-eating, wry, impish girl that he had drunkenly fallen in love with (and subsequently basically forgotten the next morning) one night long ago—appeared before him. "Don't get too many stupid ideas, sailor," she said. "You wind up paying for them."

"Scurvy," he agreed, mildly aware that he had no idea what the word meant.

She laughed, mildly aware that Endo had no idea what the word meant, and said, "Okay. I'll call you sometime."

Then she vanished. He sat back down.

_Scurvy. That's just scurvy. _

Endo Kunikuda rather enjoyed being right. He thought that maybe Sei would be grateful to him for catching on, though he was disappointed to note that it would not get him any nearer the inside of her pants: Because he knew that he was right, he knew she played for the other team. Too bad. She _was _pretty hot. He started thinking up a few excuses to make to his guy friends about why he did a plain miss tonight, thinking that if he said it straight-out—_She's a lesbian, I had no chance—_they'd probably just laugh at him, citing the same counter-argument that he had cited to himself earlier that night.

But he was right.

She did.

* * *

**Six**  
_I say hello / you say hello_

* * *

If Endo Kunikuda had not caught on, had not stood and shouted, _hey, Sei, I understand how you feel, and I'll be your friend, _Sei may have not even approached Yumi Fukuzawa that night. The instant she saw the girl's face, she knew that in the state she had driven here in, she would not have been strong enough, brave enough to do what _she _had to do. Feeling shitty for herself, feeling as though the world were simply a big fat phony, questioning every single damnable thing that was said to her and keeping it all to her own stupid fucking self, she would only have made Yumi worse that night. 

Because, she thought, that was exactly what Yumi was doing. Sitting in front of the counter, the girl nursed a small glass of _something, _and that was about all she did—Sei saw none of Yumi's usual radiance tonight. The bar remained dim, lifeless, whereas Sei might have expected it to suddenly be as bright as a candle with that happy, expressive girl inside of it. Her hair was down, a state that Sei had only previously seen her in when she slept. She wore a jacket and jeans, and sneakers. She was not dressed to go out and have a good time—she looked like a girl who was dressed such that if she woke up the next morning naked and uncertain of where she was, her clothes would have been no great loss.

However, something about the way Endo had said what he said had perked her up; she had spent most of the evening miserable; not simply afraid as she had been telling herself. She had even been happy, a little, when he had caught onto her. Fear had been part of the equation, of course, but solitude did funny things to a person's brain, she knew; the worst part of it was that solitude, especially solitude in the midst of a crowd, was devious—it didn't let you say, _hey, you're lonely, _because there were twenty-odd people around you that called themselves your friends. Sei was, after all, not a fearful person. She was, however, human, and solitude took its due toll on her as it did on everybody. She only briefly considered this before deciding that she did not give a flying batshit. She could deal with introspective horsepiss later. For now…

She gathered up her courage. She found that she felt herself needing it. She had not seen Yumi in over a year—not since the young girl had gone off to University. They had not parted on bad terms, but Sei had found that as Yumi aged, she became less and less tolerant of Sei's teasing. Save for one odd time when the girl had responded, _(and oh, how she had responded), _by Yumi's senior year at Lillian, Sei had more often than not found herself teasing a brick wall.

Sei wondered now how she should approach Yumi even as she did. Should she buy her a drink? Say something to make her smile? Say something traditional like, _may I sit here? _(The last one did not at all seem to fit her, but given the mood of her evening, it didn't seem entirely inappropriate).

She considered this so hard that by the time she reached Yumi, who still had not noticed her, she hadn't thought of a single thing. So, following the advice of thousands of dating sages the world over, she simply sat on the stool next to her, uninvited, and said, "Hi, Yumi."

Yumi jerked in shock and turned her head so fast that Sei thought it might break clean off. "Y-you!" she sputtered. "You scared me!" Her face was pulled up in an expression of shock, and, oddly enough, of relief. Was it possible to be both at once? _Apparently._

"It was easy," Sei said with a grin, finding her old mannerisms returning to her seamlessly, in sharp contrast to how she'd been with Kunikuda earlier in the evening. Even so, she still felt a strain somewhere near her core—she was still tired, still stressed, still afraid. She thought she had probably failed in her original mission unless she could call Kunikuda and ask him to spread around that they'd had sex or something equally stupid; that tugged one way at her. She thought that Yumi might simply ask her to leave, that the young, vibrant girl had simply become so tired of her face that she would send her away; that tugged at her another way. It was, all things considered, all Sei could do to keep her expression, but damned if she couldn't at least do that. "How are you, Yumi?" Yumi's expression clouded briefly but intensely, the look of somebody who was trying to cry and smile all at once, and Sei, who would think a millisecond later that she had overreacted and a minute and a half later that she hadn't, said, "Hey," her voice serious of a sudden, "are you okay?"

Thinking back on it, Sei realized that this was probably the worst thing she could have said to Yumi, even if she couldn't have helped it, couldn't have known.

_Are you okay _is a funny little expression. With few exceptions, the people who hear this phrase are largely the people who are, in fact, visibly not okay. There are varying degrees of _visible—_just as a lover of many years may pick out signs of being _not okay _more easily than a friend from work, some people might broadcast signs of being _not okay _more or more often than others. For example…

_For example, if this were Sachiko, I wouldn't even get a straight answer. _As it was…

The other funny little thing about _are you okay _is this, and it is for the first time now that Sei realizes it: As soon as somebody asks a distraught person if they are okay, they are not. It is the _open sesame _of the proverbial floodgates, and all the person's carefully constructed barriers come crashing down, all at once. It is a well-meaning reminder that the person is not well, and it is the utmost of sympathies, because asking this of a distraught person is an invitation to become a shoulder to cry on.

As it was, Yumi's floodgates had been nearly broken anyway; it was almost a mercy to give them that last little kick. The first tears came slowly, discreetly, working their not-quite-parallel ways down Yumi's cheeks like spies, trying desperately to blend in with her nearly invisible makeup. She stared at Sei for a moment through watery eyes, and Sei thought she saw something like a smile pass over the girl's lips, and all at once she understood.

_Yumi did not lock up because she found me annoying. Not at all. _Sei did not know why she _had _become such a brick wall, but it didn't matter. She could guess, anyway.

Then Yumi broke down. Tears flooded down her cheeks as her chest heaved powerfully, in and out, drawing breath just barely fast enough to keep her going. She hung her head, sobbing powerfully but quietly, (they were, after all, in public, and a Lady did not sob in public, Sei thought angrily) and after a moment, Sei put her hand on Yumi's head, already moist with sweat from the exertion —crying full-force was a tiring event. She bent her head down close to Yumi's, and whispered, "Come on, Yumi. Let's get you somewhere less public and drunken, 'kay?" The only place that really came to mind was the ladies' room—that bastion of solitude and sisterhood that the likes of Kunikuda and the obviously perturbed bartender could only guess at. Even so, it was better than bawling in public.

And, of course, it was more private.

* * *

**Seven**  
_Let's take the unknown path to the sky._

* * *

The bathroom fit with the rest of the restaurant, in that it was western-themed. It bore six stalls and a short line of sinks in front of a giant mirror that made Sei think of the interrogation rooms in some of the crime dramas she'd seen on television; the stall at the end was larger, for the handicapped, and it was there that Sei took Yumi, still shaking violently, though no longer sobbing. 

Sliding the lock shut, Sei plopped Yumi down on the toilet seat and squatted next to her. The girl was so short that even like this, Sei came easily up to her badly-shaking chest _with both hands clutched against it like a grieving nun or a widow or _

Gently, Sei took one of Yumi's hands from her chest and pressed it between her own breasts, squeezing the tiny thing gently. After a second, Yumi's fingers tightened around Sei's, and for a second, the two of them stayed there like that, neither moving so much as a muscle. Even their breathing quieted, and for a moment, there was pure silence in the bathroom that Sei would later remember so fondly and bitterly.

Then Sei looked up and met Yumi's eyes, finding the girl already staring down at her, as though expecting something. Sei wasn't really certain what it was, so she gave to her the first thing that came to mind: A smile.

"Hi, Yumi," she said for the second time that evening. "How are you?" Her voice was clean and confident, the Sei that Yumi was used to (and, though she didn't know it, the Sei that Yumi needed to hear).

Yumi managed a brave smile—those who can only manage a brave smile are usually holding on by the skin of their teeth and bravery as it is, and Yumi was no exception. "Hi, Sei," she said, and Sei took a moment to marvel at the girl's voice; even trembling as it was, she could hear how it had grown in the span of only a year, and for a moment, Sei felt an unforgiving wave of nostalgia wash over her. "I've done better." Her voice cracked, and Sei saw tears stinging at the edges of her eyes.

Sei stood up, and pulled Yumi up with her. For a moment, neither was sure what was going on, until Sei pulled the girl into her arms; a strong,

_loving_

comforting grip

_for both of us_

and gave her the shoulder she so desperately needed.

The funny thing about shoulders, though, is that by the time we have them, we rarely need them anymore. Usually, just having one is enough.

Yumi stayed there for a minute anyway; they were warm together, and for just that one little minute, they were both happy. Sei no longer had problems at school; was no longer concerned about failing her upper-level mathematics class, was no longer afraid of the women she lived with, of their small minds and long reaches. Was no longer afraid of Endo Kunikuda, (in a small, then-insignificant part of her mind, she resolved to call him back within a week or two).

And as for Yumi:

"She's gone," Yumi murmured, and Sei had an idea or two what she was talking about. "She's been gone for a year. This is our one-year _she's-gone _anniversary."As she said this, the strangest little rhyme appeared in Sei's head, one that she'd learned as a child

_(all-gone all-gone cattail fish is all-gone, ne'er seen again / where to where to into the sea its so blue; now we start again)_

and then vanished just as easily, a stubborn cattail that her mind could not entirely wrap around.

"Where did she go?" Sei asked.

"Kyoto," she said. "Away from here. It might as well have been Ryukyu." _The point is that she left, not where she went. _

"Why?" Sei asked.

"I don't know," Yumi said. "I think she was running away from me."

"I doubt that," Sei said, patting Yumi's head. "I don't think she would ever do that, Yumi." _It was probably her family. It was probably Suguru. I'll have that motherfucking bastard's head on a stick. _

"Then why…" Yumi's voice caught. "Why the hell did she have to leave?"

Sei couldn't think of anything to say to that, which was probably bad, because Yumi kept going, which was definitely bad. Already, she was starting to fumble words, something Sei hadn't heard her do in years. "All I wanted w-was to go to school with her…so that we wouldn't have to be apart. I was going to tell her, Sei, did you know that? I was going to tell her."

"Tell her what?" Sei asked gently, dreading the answer. She hated herself for it, but her stomach sank; she thought well of herself, though, for not allowing any stray thoughts

_i can be there for you_

_she wont_

to pass through her head. Refusing to let that small little animal in the pit of her stomach pass to her brain, to niggle at her, to tell her _now's your chance. All these years, waiting and teasing and now's your shot._

Yumi's voice was little more than a whisper now; perhaps that was the loudest she could bear to say it. Sei thought it dreadfully sad that this was the first time she _could _say it, and it was not to the one she meant it for. She thought she was okay with that, and yet each word still drilled a hole in her gut:

_I was going to tell her I'm in love with her. _

_each  
fucking  
word_

Sei grimaced and forced her head clear. Refusing to give in; forcing herself to let go.

"I just wanted to be near her. Even if she would have refused me, I wanted to be near her. It's the—" Yumi's breath caught, and Sei stroked her hair, waiting for the girl to regain herself. "It's the winter now. I wanted to just sit with her near a heater and look out at the snow. We did that once, you know."

"I know," Sei said.

"So then…" Yumi let a slow, long, shaky breath out. "Why was that too much to ask? Was I too selfish even wanting _that?_ Was I being selfish? Was I being—" Sei cut her off, pressing her harder into her breast. At some point, it didn't help to repeat oneself.

"Shh," she whispered. "You weren't, Yumi. Sometimes, just…" _All you have to say is "sometimes, some things just aren't meant to be, and we have to take what's in front of us."_

Sei opened her mouth to say this. _ Sometimes, we just have to let ourselves accept what we can't ha_

_look who the fuck is talking._

This hurt worse than Yumi's confession, because it stung deeper than her heart: It stung her pride.

"Sometimes," she murmured. "We lose things we want for a while. Sometimes they just come back a little later on." _What the fuck are you doing? This isn't how _

_shut up._

"Why did she leave, Sei?" Yumi said, pulling away from her finally. When Sei got a look at her, she smiled. She looked awful, as was to be expected of a girl who had expertly made up her face, only to cry most of what she'd applied out onto another girl's blouse. (Which, incidentally, Sei didn't give a damn about.)

"Ask her yourself," Sei said. "She has a phone. She has a place of residence."

"I can't…"

Sei smiled at her, and it clicked as fast for her as the truth about Yumi had.

"Sachiko did not leave town to get away from you, Yumi."

Yumi looked up at her then, and her eyes were almost pleading. "How do you know?" she sounded almost agitated. _Mm. She looks agitated as well. Excellent observation, Ryuzaki. _

Sei said, "Why did you stop responding to me at the end of your last year in school?"

"That's…" Yumi looked away. "It wasn't that…"

"That you didn't like me. You just had something else you needed to do first, right?"

Yumi nodded mutely.

"Sachiko has something she needs to do first. If she's got a little tunnel vision, you have to respect that, don't you think?"

"But…she just…left."

"So just go find her. You're not in school every day. Even Universities have breaks."

Yumi nodded then—the nod of a person who is done hearing advice, whether she has accepted it or not. She pressed her face back into Sei's blouse, and Sei smiled gently, bringing her own face down to rest on the top of the girl's head.

_She really does look pretty with her hair down._

They stayed like that for a long time. People entered the restroom, did their business, and left. The toilet flushed and people sat and stood, pulled panties up and down, clattered around in heels and sneakers. Hands were washed, makeup applied, bad dates avoided.

All of this happened purely _around _the entity that was Sei and Yumi, embracing tightly, each needing the other more than they would ever admit. Each feeling their own little insecurities and fears, each moving past them in their own way, and yet in the same way: By embracing the warmth that the other presented. Yumi knew nothing of Sei's problems, and yet Sei thought she knew more of them than she let on.

_She's moved on. She's grown up._

_She's still here._

"It's very lonely," Sei whispered finally. "Isn't it."

"It is," Yumi whispered. "It's hard. It's painful, and it's…cowardly."

"It's _so _cowardly," Sei agreed. She knew how the girl felt; knew all the urges, all the impulses, just to be cowardly and stupid and let the pain sag and wash over her all at once; to shelter herself in it. Knew how often she let herself wash away. Knew how often Yumi did too.

Knew how hard Yumi's heart beat against her stomach.

_Knew how hard Yumi sometimes was to understand._

It was_ so _cowardly.

_Fuck it._

_If it's cowardly, I think it's the kind of cowardly we can both live with. _

Sei moved away from Yumi, at once regretting the loss of the girl's warmth. "Yumi," she said, looking straight into the girl's eyes, whatever the urge to look away, to blush, to ignore the jackhammer of her own pulse, the feeling in Yumi's hands of a similar heartbeat. "Do you think yourself a coward?"

"Sometimes," Yumi admitted. "I don't think it can be helped, though."

"Me too," Sei said, and then pulled her close and kissed her. Yumi hesitated only for a moment, and then kissed her back, using one hand to pull Sei's head close. Yumi was clumsy with her mouth—this was not her first kiss, but it was certainly among them—but Sei, experienced in ways she would probably never admit to anybody, did not mind. They kissed like that for a small while that seemed to Sei to span an indefinite period of time; tongueless, almost sisterly if not for the passion radiating from both them and the intimacy of the kiss.

They broke off, and Sei looked at Yumi, determined to be as straightforward with her as she could.

"Yumi," she said. "I..." Sei never had trouble speaking. "I really, really like you."

"I know you do," Yumi said with a gentle, tender smile. "I really like you too, but…"

"I know," Sei said, feeling her poor, abused stomach take yet another hit. "If you don't…you know. I can give you a ride home. I'm sober."

Yumi considered for a moment that seemed like a year in hell to Sei, and then nodded. "Please, take me home."

Sei refused to let her gaze drop. However much she  
_wanted_  
liked  
_loved_  
Yumi, this was not about sex. This was about getting Yumi what Yumi needed; not about getting what Sei wanted.

Still.

It seemed nearly impossible.

* * *

**Eight**  
_It's so difficult. I hate it._

* * *

Endo was actually still in the restaurant when they left, and Sei actually took a moment to go to him on their way out. She left Yumi at the door and nearly ran up to him. When he looked up at her, it was with a mix of drunken hope and pleasant oblivion. He had obviously been indulging himself. 

"Hey there, Sei," he said as coherently as he could manage. "Did you find what you were lookin' for?"

"I did. I just wanted to say thank you," Sei said. She put her hand on his shoulder, and then, thinking herself extraordinarily affable, patted it in a manner that Endo would have expected from a guy-friend consoling him about this very evening. It made him grimace, an expression Sei thought to mean that he was about to vomit. She had no idea what a gaffe she'd made, though it didn't particularly matter, since he wouldn't remember it come the next day anyway. "So…thank you." She patted him again, and then turned and walked back to Yumi.

"What was that about?" Yumi asked when she returned, a little bewildered. She was obviously not used to seeing Sei speaking with men pleasantly.

"He's a friend. Call him a buddy, I guess." Sei found herself unable to be too disappointed—Yumi was perking up too, and when Yumi was perky, Sei was perky. It was simply unavoidable.

Their walk back to the car was silent, but it seemed that as soon as they shut the door, Yumi began to talk. She talked about airy, oblivious things: The classes she was taking at the University; how Yuuki was doing, her roommate's annoying habit of showing up at three in the morning, half-naked and all-drunk. Useless things that made Sei smile nonetheless. She avoided the subject at hand, and Sei avoided it with her, and it was cowardly but relieving.

Yumi continued in that fashion until Sei asked her where she lived, about a block from the tollway.

"Oh…" Yumi frowned a little sheepishly. "I live over on the Tokyo University campus…the one in Nakano."

Sei's eyes widened. "Woah. Tokyo U? Christ, Yumi. You did well for yourself."

"Took the lord's name in vain…" Yumi murmured a little more sheepishly.

Sei grinned in spite of herself. "Sorry."

Sei got back on the tollway, dropping the small deposit in the little change basin without much thought. They were silent for a minute, and Sei realized all too late that this meant that Yumi was thinking, which meant that their time speaking airily was through, a passing which Sei lamented more than she cared to admit. "I'll just get onto route 4; that should drop us right—"

"Did you ever consider sleeping with Shimako?"

Sei shut her mouth, and then sighed, needing no time to consider "No."

"Why?"

"I loved Shimako, but differently. I'd sleep with her, but only if she wanted to, or needed to, and it wouldn't be for love. Shimako is a strong girl; if she wanted something like that, she'd have come to me for it."

"You've always taken that attitude towards her. Did you ever worry…" Yumi's breath caught a little. "Did you ever worry that maybe you judged her wrong? That she was just shy?" _Or worse, cowardly. _

"Nope," Sei smiled. "I didn't judge her wrong. Besides, I think she's straight."

"I'm serious."

"Me too. The two of us were close, but we weren't near, Yumi. If you asked me, I couldn't name you her favorite color."

"Could you name mine?" Yumi asked this hesitantly.

This time it was Sei's turn to be sheepish. "Probably not; it was a bad example." Then, after a moment, "If I had to guess, though, I'd put you as a pink girl. Or white."

_Such a strange thing, having white as one's favorite color. White is none of the colors at all—it refracts every single one of them. Is that the ultimate in indecisiveness?_

"Something like that," Yumi smiled.

"The point is that Shimako and I weren't…like that."

"Were we?" It sounded like a rebuke, and Sei thought it might have been.

"I'm sorry," Sei whispered.

"Don't be," Yumi smiled. "I'm not. I think I'm making a point."

_Making a point. Did she ever _make a point _like this when I knew her last?_

"Please, then," Sei said wryly. "Don't hold yourself back on my account."

Yumi paused, and then laughed, and Sei was glad to hear it: "You know, I don't know entirely what it is. I guess if I made it, you got it better than I did."

Sei considered for a moment, and then decided she had.

* * *

**Nine / fin**  
_It's so cowardly._

* * *

The last thing Yumi asked Sei before they arrived at her dorm, which was remarkably close once Sei dropped onto National Route Four, was this: 

"Why did you tease me and not Shimako?"

Sei smiled easily at this. "You were more fun to tease, Yumi." And then, before Yumi could open her mouth to chastise her for spitting bullshit, she continued: "Besides, I think you wanted to be teased. Shimako didn't. Shimako wanted me to support her from somewhere behind her; I was her stunt net, but she never fell while I was there."

Sei pulled up near the curb in front of a large, old building. "You're here, kiddo."

Yumi didn't move, so Sei seized this one last opportunity, suddenly afraid that she would never get to ask this if she didn't do it now.

"Yumi?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you ask me so many questions about Shimako?"

"I guess…" Yumi smiled a little. "I guess in a lot of ways, I felt as though I was your _petite soeur, _too. I guess I just wanted to know."

Sei smiled at her. "Satisfied?"

"Satisfied."

Yumi opened the car door. The chill air stung Sei's flesh.

"I guess…I'll see you around."

"I guess you will," Sei said. "If you need anything, call me. You've still got my phone number; it hasn't changed. Unless, of course, you deleted it."

"I didn't."

"I'm glad."

Sei reached around and gave Yumi a quick, deep hug, which Yumi gladly returned. Sei made sure to savor the scent of this girl whom she cared about so deeply, in her heart thinking that this was perhaps the last time she would ever smell it so closely, if at all, and wanting it to make a nice, firm dent in her brain if this was the case.

Then Yumi left. She shut the car door gently but firmly behind her and began to trudge up the snow. Sei felt the pit in the bottom of her stomach expand, threatening to suck the car in with it, but she held her face steady in case Yumi happened to look back. There was a little snow on the ground, but Yumi didn't slip on it, and Sei thought this a mark of how the girl had truly grown for some reason (though she had rarely slipped before, either—certainly no more than a normal girl, though Lillian's graduates were by no means normal girls). Sei made up her mind to wait until Yumi was safely in her dorm before she left—she did not, she reasoned, want her to get locked out and freeze to death.

Yumi was a quarter of the way up the walk. Sei's breath became a little harder to draw. Her head ached very vaguely.

Yumi was a third of the way up the walk. Sei felt her chest tremble a little.

Yumi was a half of the way up the walk.

Yumi was three-quarters up. _Maybe I should leave now. She's got to have a key, so there's really no point in me st_

Yumi stopped, and in spite of the way her exit had seemed to drag on into infinity, her return took no time at all. Sei rolled down the window when she approached, but Yumi ignored her, walking around to the other side, opening the door, and taking a seat.

"I always thought," Yumi said quietly, "that Shimako was stupid. For not getting close to you when she had the chance. Even with _Onee-sama _around, I would sometimes think that. I never wished I could be her, but I always wished she would take advantage of what she had near her."

Sei said nothing. She could think of nothing to say.

"I suppose…I suppose I would be stupid for not taking advantage of what I have near me while it's here, either. If it'll be gone tomorrow, then I should…"

"I'm not going anywhere, Yumi," Sei said, trying to sound reassuring, and Yumi laughed.

"If your night were still up to me," Yumi said, "I think that would have cost you it. I've never known you to…to misstep like that before."

Sei, who had refused to see, looked, her smile fading.

She saw that Yumi was breathing hard. Saw that her eyes flickered between Sei's eyes and her lips. Saw the little…spark? Was that it?...of adulthood in the girl's face. Saw that Yumi was bolder and stronger than Sei was, and yet just as cowardly. _Aren't we all cowardly at heart, after all? All of us Ladies and Gentlemen, just (all-gone all-gone cattail fish is all-gone, ne'er seen again) big fat scaredy-cats? (where to where to into the sea its so blue; now we start again)_

Sei wanted to kiss Yumi again desperately—wanted to savor the feeling of the girl's soft lips again; wanted to feel the heat (not simply warmth) radiating off of her again. Wanted to  
_touch  
lick_  
have her head drawn back into Yumi's delicate, insistent arms again.

She did not, however.

"Am I Shimako, then?" Yumi said, and then Sei understood.

"No," Sei said, and then she kissed Yumi a second time. She savored the feeling of the girl's soft lips again; felt the heat radiating off of her face again.

She touched. Her hand was hesitant at first, moving towards Yumi's breast, touching, squeezing; it was useless. She felt only the soft padding of a bra. She slipped her hand under Yumi's jacket, onto the smooth, soft skin of her belly, and went upward from there, only encouraged by the small shiver Yumi gave in reply. When she came upon it, she slid her hand under Yumi's bra and caressed her, stroking, savoring the hardness which mixed so well with the softness.

She lifted the shirt slightly and broke the kiss. She licked.

Yumi gently pressed her hand and head away. Sei refused to allow herself to look hurt, but didn't have to try after a moment, when Yumi said simply, "Not here. My dorm light isn't on, which means my roommate is either gone or passed out for the rest of the night, come earthquake or avalanche. There."

Sei turned the car off, taking half a second even in her fervor to make sure she wasn't illegally parked. She wasn't.

And then, for the first time in many years, Sei Satou allowed herself to be led.

She was led up that walk.

She was led up several flights of stairs. She was led into a small, well-kept dorm room which was, indeed, empty.

She was led onto Yumi's soft bed. They both huddled slightly under the sheets; it was cold. When Yumi saw the shape of Sei's body; the smooth, well-developed curves, she gave a sharp, flustered intake of breath: Her own body was nowhere near so well-proportioned. Sei was, by most standards, very beautiful. Her breasts were full and her waist was slim, her hips curved just so. Yumi's body was, in many ways, still young, though it would never grow much more than it already had.

Sei thought her gorgeous, and told her so, the honesty apparent in her voice. It made Yumi smile, and it made Yumi blush a little, and it made Yumi kiss her.

They didn't notice the cold after that.

Sei later thought that what they did that night might have been cowardly._ Hell, _she would think, _most of that whole night was cowardice, through and through. _She would later tell Endo Kunikuda most of the story, though she skipped over certain, less plot-centric details. (Much to Endo's disappointment). What Endo Kunikuda, ever a good man, had to say about it was this:

_Obviously, I don't know the whole situation. I don't know this Shimako girl, and I don't know Yumi, either. I don't know the relationship you two guys have, nor what relationship Yumi has with her 'Onee-sama,' (I hope that is a term you guys use for something other than blood siblings, too; I really do). It doesn't matter, though. What I do know is that you were lonely that night, and a little scared of something that wasn't entirely me and wasn't entirely the girls at your school. It seems to me like you were scared on some fundamental level of something like being alone. And it sounds to me like Yumi was feeling more or less the same way. What you two did had nothing to do with cowardice and everything to do with love and support. _There, he stopped, and added with a wry grin, _Or some girly bullshit like that._

Maybe he was right.

Maybe it all was just bullshit. After all, Sei was the kind of girl who wore her hair down and played her music as loud as she damn well pleased.

And Yumi…

Yumi was the kind of girl that Sei would love to have along for the ride, whatever that ride might have been. Even if there wasn't any sex at the end of the tunnel; even if it was _just friends _for them. _(It's curtains, curtains for you). _

That was enough. Six weeks later, she was asked out by a pretty girl from her school—one who had always worn her hair down, even though she kept her head down; Sei accepted. She told Yumi, and Yumi was delighted. That meant that it _was _Just Friends for them. It hurt, but there was nothing cowardly about that. Not at all.

That was just fine.

* * *

A little end note: I've recieved some criticism at this point that Sei is uncharacteristically weak in this story. This is a perfectly valid opinion; indeed, it seemed to me like this too, until I reached the end, but I'd love it if you considered this before you set your mind too intently: 

Cowardice happens to us all; we do strange things when we are afraid. Those who do not are not truly human. I have deliberately not described in great detail the events which led up to this story (for example, what precisely Sei is afraid of, though I'm sure those of us who have grown up different in a bigoted environment can guess) because I wanted to leave this up to the reader's imagination. So, imagine, for a moment, if you will: What would you be afraid of which might cause you to act out in a way that would make people hesitate to believe that it was even you? If you were in Sei's shoes, what would you fear? If you like, I can generate a probable scenario for you--it is certainly not beyond my realm of talent, however meagre it may be, to do so--but I think it's fascinating if you, dear reader, consider it unto yourself. Consider how Sei observed Yumi overcoming her own fear, and think on how that may have affected Sei, who has always been affected by Yumi.

Of course, all of this may simply be the author's melodramatic attempt to bullshit his way out of a mediocre piece of work--if that is how you see it, that's your business. I think about these things after I've written them, and they seem to make sense to me, but of course they do--I wrote them. However you think of this, I thank you for reading.


End file.
